Amsterdam also exists in Ohio, Saskatchewan and South Africa

The big brother in New York

The best-known namesake is in New York State, on the Mohawk, the river that forms part of the Erie Canal there. The city of Amsterdam had 18,219 residents at the 2020 US census. It was first called Veedersburg, after miller Albert Veeder, but took the name Amsterdam around 1803 or 1804; Dutch settlers are said to have lived there since around 1710. In the nineteenth century the city grew into the centre of the American carpet industry. Around the city lies a second Amsterdam: the town of the same name, with some 5,500 residents.

Two famous people come from this Amsterdam. Film star Kirk Douglas was born there on 9 December 1916 as Issur Danielovitch, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, at 46 Eagle Street, in the poorest part of town. In his autobiography he described how his father, a ragman, stood on the lowest rung of the ladder even in that street. Since 2018 there has been a plaque on the corner of Main Street and Eagle Street. And on 23 April 1941 Ray Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, NY: the man who sent the first e-mail in 1971 and came up with the @ sign in the e-mail address.

America is full of Amsterdams

And that is not all in the United States. In Ohio there is a village called Amsterdam at the junction of Routes 43 and 164, founded in 1828 by Dutch immigrant David Johnson. At the latest census it had 436 residents, exactly twice as many as Amsterdam, Missouri, with 218. That little town owes its name to money: railway builder Arthur Stilwell named it in 1891 after the city where the firm of his financier Jan de Goeijen was based. Our Amsterdam, in other words.

There are also Amsterdams in California (near Atwater, in the middle of the Central Valley), Montana, New Jersey, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and even a second one in Ohio. Often they are little more than a few houses along the road. Amsterdam, Idaho only had its own post office between 1912 and 1954.

Thirty people on the prairie

In the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan, some 64 kilometres north of Yorkton, lies the hamlet of Amsterdam. It was founded around 1900 by nine Dutch immigrants. At its peak it had a post office, a grain elevator, a garage and a school. At the 2021 Canadian census thirty people still lived there, today mostly of Ukrainian descent.

A Scottish village with a Dutch name

Perhaps the best story comes from South Africa. In what is now the province of Mpumalanga, the Scotsman Alexander McCorkindale founded a settlement for Scottish emigrants from 1868 onwards. The village was first called Roburnia, after the Scottish poet Robert Burns. But after the First Boer War (1880-1881), when the Boers enjoyed a great deal of sympathy in the Netherlands, it was renamed Amsterdam on 5 July 1882: as a thank-you to the Netherlands, and also after the birthplace of Transvaal state secretary Eduard Bok. The village is surrounded by large pine and eucalyptus plantations, and sheep have long been kept there. In 2019 the town officially got a new name: eMvelo.

And then there is an island

The name turns up outside America and Africa too. Nieuw-Amsterdam is the main town of the Commewijne district in Suriname, with a fort from 1734. At the mouth of the Berbice in Guyana lies New Amsterdam. And deep in the southern Indian Ocean lies the French Île Amsterdam: in 1522 the Spanish explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano called it 'Despair', but on 17 June 1633 Anthonie van Diemen named it after his ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam. There are no permanent residents, only researchers.

Curious how the real Amsterdam became the capital? Or why it has the area code 020?